Lighting

 Natural Light on Set

Welcome back, everyone! Today, I will discuss the lighting used in our movie. The light in our film is essential to conveying the overall atmosphere and emotions conveyed, being a suspenseful horror.

Lighting used

While we previously intended to use a variety of lighting such as a key light, spot light, etc., we ended up using only the natural lighting. At first, this was because we did not have the proper professional equipment to use for this second day of shooting as we had to return the minimal equipment that we did have on us the first day of shooting.  This was also another factor behind our setting change from a nightt-time forest to an afternoon environment. Despite, the use of only natural light turned out to be a good idea due to the realism it provided for the suspenseful forest atmosphere, and the cloudy, dim weather certainly helped!

Weather Impacts

The weather was almost a paid actor on the day of the shoot! The weather was odd, being slightly foggy and the sun out of vision due to the heavy clouds above. The grey weather seemed to be perfect for the occasion! This helped set the mood of our movie without needing to overdo it with visual effects. It may even have reflected the psychological elements of our characters. The dark weather can represent their anxious state, and when the weather got darker upon revealing the dark figure, it seemed to signify the character's deteriorating mental states!

Issues

Obviously, when working with natural light, it is out of our control. While this day of shooting seemed to set the perfect tense mise en scene for our film, we know that it is unlikely to see similar weather like that anytime soon. In the event of a necessary re-shoot, we understand it will likely be sunny weather with much brighter lighting, so we may have to limit our camera angles and sequences to maintain the dim lighting. As of now, we are content with the mise en scene in our current shoots and have no plans for a third day of shooting.

Budgets

If we had a higher budget, we certainly would have invested a lot more into equipment. We would have used three point lighting and low key lighting, as well as better microphones. With the improvement in lighting, we would have changed our setting to nighttime, as the lights would help keep our characters and the environment visible while still keeping the darkness of the forest.